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<h1>Frequently Asked Questions</h1>

<h3>What is this project about?</h3>
This is a web conference application that allows you to do multiparty audio and video conferences and
slide presentation. It uses Websocket for RESTful signaling with a backend server and Flash Player
for audio and video communication. The software architecture is based on the
<a href="https://sites.google.com/site/vvowproject">Voice and Video on Web</a> project at IIT
Chicago. Please see the project web site for details of design, implementation and contributers.
The Flash based audio and video communication is used from the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/flash-videoio">Flash
VideoIO</a> project.

<h3>Is this web conferencing application free?</h3>
Yes. The application is free to use, and the project source code is available as GPL open
source license. You can download the source code from <a href="http://code.google.com/p/vvowproject/">
http://code.google.com/p/vvowproject/</a>. Any feedback and support request can be sent to
the project owners.

<h3>What is the minimum system requirements?</h3>
It supports these browsers: Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer 8 or higher.
You need good Internet connectivity to support multiparty audio and video communication.
Finally, you need open and less restrictive NAT and firewall.
<br/><br/>
If you use the latest Google Chrome web browser, you should be fine. It requires Websocket,
Javascript and Flash Player 10.3 or higher. In the absence of Websocket it falls back to use
Flash Player for signaling, hence takes a few seconds to connect due to timeout of flash-policy file.
For Flash Player 10.0-10.2, echo cancellation feature is disabled. 

<h3>How do I create a conference?</h3>
On the Main tab, under "Create New Web Conference" box, you can create a new conference
by specifying your name, the conference name, and your moderator password. Then you send an
email to your participants giving the link to this web
application, and the name of your conference. You automatically join a newly created
conference.

<h3>How do I join an existing conference?</h3>
On the Main tab, under "Join Existing Web Conference" box, you can select an existing
conference from the list and specifyying your name to join the conference. If you know the
moderator password, you can join as a moderator by enterting the moderator password.
If you create a new conference, you automatically become the moderator of that
conference.

<h3>How do I moderate my conference?</h3>
If you created a new conference or joined an existing conference with a moderator password,
you can control whose video stream is published and what slide presentation is shown
in your conference. On the Video Conference tab, a moderator can check the checkbox for
individual participants to enable his or her audio and video stream. Other participants
can not control the check box but can see the state of the check box.

<h3>How do I share slides presentation?</h3>
As a moderator, you can share slides in this Web Conference with from slideshare.net web site
only. Just copy the slideshare URL of your slides first. Then on the Video Conference tab,
click on the document icon <img src="document_icon_16x16.png"></img> near the participants
list. Then paste the URL of your slides. It takes some time for the URL to be fetched for
individual slides list so be patient before the first slides show up. As a moderator,
you see the next and previous buttons on the bottom right corner of the slides, and a
close button on the top right corner. Other participants see the current slides as well as
the moderator's mouse position in the slide.

<h3>What is raising an hand?</h3>
As a participant, a user can click on the hand icon <img src="hand_icon_16x16.png"></img> to
raise hand. The moderator as well as other participants see who has raised hand, and
the moderator may enable the video stream of the participant raising hand. This feature is
implemented mostly for one to many presentation where normally participant video stream
is not shown. Clicking on the hand icon again unraises your hand.

<h3>How do I do text chat?</h3>
Text chat is like any other text chat application where any participant can type a message and
press the "enter" key to send the message in the Text Chat box of the Video Conference tab.
Every participant sees the message in the conference. If multiple messages are sent successively
by the same participant, they appear under one name in the chat history box. The
chat history box also displays events such as when a user joins or leaves.

<h3>How do I clear the chat history?</h3>
On the Video Conference tab, under the Text Chat box, you can click on the close icon <img
src="close_icon_16x16.png"></img> to clear your chat history box. As a moderator, if you
click on this button, you also clear the persistent chat history if any, whereas as a
participant you just clear your local view.

<h3>What is a persistent conference?</h3>
By default a new conference is temporary, and disappears when the moderator leaves the
conference page. As a moderator, you can change your conference to be persistent in the
Preferences tab under the Conference Settings. A persistent conference stores all the
text chat history from the moment it becomes persistent. The moderator can clear the
chat history as mentioned above.

<h3>What are the conference settings?</h3>
As a moderator, you can change the default conference settings in the Preferences tab under
the Conference Settings box.<ul>
<li>The persistent property is described above.</li>
<li>The auto-start new
participant's video property causes automatic start of video stream of a new participant, and is
typically useful for multi-party conference without presentation.</li>
<li>The show per participant
video controls property causes display of video control bar below each participant video. The
video control bar allows you to control your microphone mute, volume, camera on/off, as well
as local display of other participants speaker on/off, speaker volume. It also allows you to
go full screen for individual participant video.</li>
<li>The allow HTML in text chat property enables HTML tags in the text chat so that you can
enter any pre-formated chat messages, e.g., to change color, font, size, etc. Without this
property, it identifies clickable URLs in the text chat, but no other HTML tags.</li>
<li>The show header/footer banner property shows or hides the top and bottom banners in the
conference page. Hiding the banner is useful for full screen presentations.</li>
</ul>

<h3>How do I change the moderator password?</h3>
Any participant can change the moderator password if he or she knows the existing moderator
password on the Video Conference tab under the Change Moderator Password box. Currently there is
no recover password feature. Since creating a new conference is cheap, you can always discard
your previous conference and create a new one. Please send an email to the owners if you
would like to remove your persistent conference permanently.

<h3>How do I change the device settings?</h3>
If the moderator has enabled the show per participant video controls property, you can change
some settings from within your video box. Otherwise on the Preferences tab under Media and
Device Settings you can see the Flash Player settings box. You do not need to click on "close"
in that box. You can explore other settings by clicking on microphone or camera icon in that
box. The Flash Player settings allows you to select the camera or microphone, as well as
set the microphone volume.

<h3>Does it implement echo cancellation?</h3>
With Flash Player 10.3 or later, the application will automatically enable echo cancellation.
In a multiparty conference, even if one participant does not have echo cancellation enabled,
all other participants will hear echo of their own voice. If two participants do not have
echo cancellation enabled, then it will cause the annoying audio feedback loop. The moderator
can control the video stream of these participants, or enable the show per participant video
controls property so that those participants can disable their microphone if they are not
speaking.

<h3>How is this project related to Web RTC?</h3>
The Web RTC effort allows you to have audio and video communication from within the browser
without using any external plugin application. In that regard, this project can be treated as
complementary to Web RTC because it provides Websocket based signaling support for a
multiparty video conferencing and presentation. The details of the signaling is described
on our <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/vvowproject">VVoW project</a>
web site. On the other hand, our VVoW project aims at using an external
host resident application to enable real-time audio and video in the long term, instead of
using the Flash Player plugin. The Flash application is used as an intermediate solution
until we build the media part of our project. We plan to build the media part using Google's
open source WebRTC software.

<h1>Screenshots</h1>

<table width="100%">
  <tr valign="top"><td width="50%">
    Four party video conference screen on small resolution
    <a target="_blank" href="screen1.png" title="click to open image in new window/tab"><img width="100%" src="screen1-small.png"/></a>
  </td><td width="50%">
    and on large resolution
    <a target="_blank" href="screen3.png" title="click to open image in new window/tab"><img width="100%" src="screen3-small.png"/></a>
  </td></tr>
  <tr height="20px"></tr>
  <tr valign="top"><td width="50%">
    Slide presentation in a conference
    <a target="_blank" href="screen4.png" title="click to open image in new window/tab"><img width="100%" src="screen4-small.png"/></a>
  </td><td width="50%">
    Preferences tab with network quality feeback
    <a target="_blank" href="screen2.png" title="click to open image in new window/tab"><img width="100%" src="screen2-small.png"/></a>
  </td></tr>
</table>

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